The Computar MPT Series is a compact 45MP, 1.4″ C-Mount Lens Series engineered to optimize the capabilities of the latest industrial CMOS sensors. The 1.4″ Ultra-high resolution Machine Vision Lenses are ultra-low distortion in a compact design available in fixed focal lengths: 12mm, 16mm, 25mm, 35mm, and 50mm. C-Mount for large format sensor.
Computar MPT 45MP C-Mount series
Designed for up to 1.4″ sensors with densely-packed pixels, as compact C-Mount lenses one achieves a more compact overall design, and lower optics costs than with a large-format lens, at the same time getting high performance. High-level aberration correction and centering/alignment technology deliver an extraordinary performance from the image center to the corner with tiny pixels.
Since the lenses may also be used with popular 1.2″ sensors, one achieves impressive Modular Transfer Function (MTF) outcomes in such a configuration.
Screenshot from video below highlights MTF performance across working distances
Call us at 978-474-0044 for expert assistance. We can tell you more about these lenses, and help you determine if they are best for your application.
The Computar MPT series lenses deliver superior performance at any working distance, thanks to the floating design. This is ideal for industrial drones, sports analytics, wide-area surveillance, and other vertical markets.
Vision Systems Design awarded the Silver Honoree in their Innovator Awards for the Computar MPT lens series.
Allied Vision has integrated the IMX548 into the Alvium family with the Alvium C/U/G5-511 camera models, where the prefix designator:
C is CSI-2, the Camera Serial Interface, popular for embedded systems
U is USB3, the widely available interface between computers and electronic devices
G5 is 5GigE, with up to 100 meter cable runs and 5x the throughput of GigE
AVT Alvium cameras are available in housed, board-level, and open versions
SONY’s IMX548 is a member of the 4th generation Pregius sensors, providing global shutter for active pixel CMOS sensors, with low-noise structure yielding high-quality images. See our illustrated blog for an overview of Pregius-S‘ back-illuminated sensor structure and its benefits.
So why the IMX548 in particular? Readers who follow the sensor market closely may note that the IMX547 looks the same in terms of pixel structure and resolution. Correct! SONY found they could adapt the sensor to a smaller and more affordable package, passing those savings along to the camera manufacturer, and in turn to the customer. As 5.1MP resolution is the sweet spot for many applications, Allied Vision picked up on SONY’s cues and integrated the IMX548 into the Alvium family.
There are nuanced timing differences between the IMX547 and IMX548. For new design-ins, this is of no consequence. If you previously used the IMX547, please check with our sales engineers to see if switching to the IMX548 requires any adjustments – or if it’s simply plug-and-play.
As shown in the photo above, Alvium cameras are very compact, and the same sensor and features are offered in housed, board-level, and open configurations. AVT Alvium is one of the most flexible, compact, and capable camera families in the current market.
Concurrent with the release of this new sensor in the Alvium camera family, Allied Vision has also released Alvium Camera Firmware V 11.00, notably adding the following features:
If your application enjoys fixed lighting conditions, objects of uniform height – and always at the same working distance from the lens – lucky you! For other imaging applications – where more variables challenge the optical solution – a different approach is needed.
In particular, IF your application exhibits one or more of:
Variable lighting due to time of day, cloud coverage (exterior application); or robot in a warehouse with uneven lighting (interior application)
Variable height targets (pick-and-place of heterogeneous items, autonomous vehicle continuously re-calculating speed and direction as it moves through the landscape or airspace)
Need to adapt to changing working distances while maintaining sharp focus
… THEN you may find that a fixed aperture lens with a narrow focal range would yield sub-optimal outcomes, or that you’d have to software-manage two or more cameras each with a different optical configuration.
Those challenges triggered the emergence of motorized lenses, such that one or more of the aperture (a.k.a. iris), the focus, or even varifocal breadth may be software controlled via electro-mechanical features. Early offerings in motorized lenses often used proprietary interfaces or required separate power vs. control cabling.
Thanks to USB, there are now machine vision lenses engineered by Computar, their LensConnect series, such that applications software can continuously control lens configuration through a single USB connection.
Each lens in the LensConnect series provide motorized zoom and iris controls. Some additionally provide varifocal zoom controls across a wide working distance.
All lenses in the series are:
Easy to use
Plug-and-play
Compatible with Windows and Linux
Precise through use of stepping motors
Computar LensConnect USB controlled lenses
Vision Systems Design named Computar a Silver Honoree in their Innovator Awards for this lens series.
While we’re all familiar with imaging in the human visible spectrum, there are also huge opportunities in non-visible portions of the spectrum. Infra-red and its sub-domains NIR, SWIR, MWIR, and LWIR have a range of compelling applications, at wavelengths just-longer than visible, starting at 800nm. Products that take us to the shorter-than-visible wavelengths, where we find UV, aren’t as well known to many. But there are sensors, cameras, lighting, filters, and best-practices for a wide range of applications generating value for many already.
Starting at the lower end of the visible spectrum, from 380nm until about 10nm, we find the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum.
UV spectrum has wavelengths just-shorter than the visible range
Applications areas include but are not limited to:
High-speed material sorting (including recyclables)
Biological domains:
Food inspection
Plant monitoring
Fluorescence analysis
Glass, gemstone, and liquid inspection
Semiconductor process monitoring
Power line inspection
Consider the following three-part illustration relative to recyclables sorting:
Differentiating between two types of plastic
In a typical recyclables operation, after magnets pick out ferrous materials and shakers bin the plastics together, one must efficiently separate plastics by identifying and picking according to materials composition. In the rightmost image above, we see that the visible spectrum is of little help in distinguishing polystyrene from acrylic resin. But per the middle image above, a pseudo-image computationally mapped into the visible spectrum, the acrylic resin appears black while the polystyrene is light gray. The takeway isn’t for humans to watch the mixed materials, of course, but to enable a machine vision application where a robot can pick out one class of materials from another.
For the particular example above, a camera, lighting, and lensing are tuned to a wavelength of 365nm, as shown in the leftmost illustration. Acrylic resin blocks that wavelength, appearing black in the calculated pseudo-image, while polycarbonate permits some UV light to pass – enough to make it clear it isn’t acrylic resin.
Different materials block or pass different wavelengths, but knowledge of those characteristics, and the imaging “toolkit” of sensors, lighting, filters, etc., are the basis for effective machine vision applications.
Here’s just one more application example:
Electrical infrastructure inspection
Scenario: we want to inspect components that may need replacing because they are showing electric discharge, as opposed to doing costly scheduled replacements on items that still have service life in them. From a ground-based imaging system, we establish the field of view on the component (marked by the purple rectangle). We take a visible image of the component; also a UV image revealing whether discharge is present; then we computationally create a pseudo-image to either log “all good” or trigger a service action for that component.
As mentioned above, biological applications, glass and fluid inspection, and semiconductor processes are also well-suited to UV imaging – it’s beyond the scope of this piece to show every known application area!
In the UV space, we are pleased to represent SVS Vistek cameras. While SVS Vistek specializes in “Beyond the Visible”, in the UV area they offer three distinct cameras. Each features Sony Pregius UV high resolution image sensors with high dynamic range and sensitivity in the 200 – 400 nm range. Maximum frame rates, depending on camera model, range from 87fps – 194fps. Interfaces include GigE and CoaXPress.
Tell us about your intended application – we love to guide customers to the optimal solution.
1st Vision’s sales engineers have over 100 years of combined experience to assist in your camera and components selection. With a large portfolio of lenses, cables, NIC card and industrial computers, we can provide a full vision solution!
Illustrations in this blog courtesy of SVS Vistek.
